Craig Green's mobile monuments for the FW22 collection

Craig Green's FW22 show held in London yesterday was, under the literal and metaphorical layers of conceptual design, a «a muddied rainbow procession that lights the way to new horizons». It was two years that the designer had been missing from the physical catwalks – two years later the looks signed by Green have combined in a way almost never seen before functionality and abstraction, transforming this dynamic of opposites into a symbol of the effort to come out stronger from isolation. It is the inside that pours out, the intangible that condenses into «solid and lasting constructions» leading to «finally forge stronger vessels on truer foundations».

There was actually, over the course of the show, the sense of a pouring out of what was inside, like a structure that breaks revealing its construction and internal anatomy, but also a reconstruction of the tactile sense of the clothes with, for example, a brown jacket that was smooth outside and had a villous interior of green mohair – the wearer feels its softness, but not the one who looks at it; or even synthetic elements, latex or similar to the material of diving suits, which overturn outwards, reveal the particularities of the interior such as the trench coat that, in the lapels of the sleeves and synthetic inserts, seems to hint at the presence of a blue rubber interior that tries to emerge. At the end of the show, a series of knitwear looks include a kind of oversized wool hoodie that inside is swollen with thick mohair whose fringes come out like fur linings and whose sleeves are anatomically inaccurate producing the impression of a strange sea creature.

The entire collection has meditated, in terms of the surreal and utilitarian textile architecture that has become Green's signature, on insulation and insulating layers, not revealing the interior through openings of the outside (think of a jacket that reveals a shirt) but revealing the inside through openings of the outside. In some looks, the structure of the classic puffer jacket is used as the inner layer of the wool coat, transforming what would normally be associated with a coat to an inner layer almost to be hidden. The possible references to natural forms and phenomena that come to mind are those to underwater life forms and lava flows of volcanoes – a kind of photograph of a state of metamorphosis in which what is liquid seems on the verge of solidifying, what has a structure seems to possess none.

All visual and chromatic talent that however has the advantage of condensing into functional, understandable but surprising garments that puts on the same level (and in a completely plausible way) designs borrowed from the world of hiking, from the medical field and from that of snorkeling – such as the collaboration with adidas that saw Green's collaborative Stan Smith closed in longitudinally buttoned monochrome sheaths with industrial-looking closures, a "hidden" collaboration in which the wearer knows what he is wearing without the shoe being visible on the outside, while other sneakers are loaded with rigid leggings that make them look like monumental Wellington Boots or are covered with inflatable elements reminiscent of the inflation pumps of sphygmomanometers.

The inverted architecture of the layers that fit together and overlap in a seemingly chaotic way following a design philosophy that sees the accessories become similar to toys, the bags as well as some of the balaclavas and more conceptual looks, along with the mohair/chenille patches to hang and pack, are bizarre in themselves but built with a very strict logic in mind,  they follow a rationality that draws from the world of invertebrates, from the idea of a packed body of BDSM straps but also from the functional approach to layers and structure of the heads of climbers and divers.

Once again we organize, rationalize and measure what seems illogical from the outside – the rational element witnessed by the harmony of colors and materials, even if apparently idiosyncratic, which is maintained even when a sleeve comes out of the chest of a jacket or swollen patches interrupt the reticulated patterns of a series of velor sports suits. The end result, in Green's own words, is a series of ­«soft form, mobile monuments to personal journeys, lined with sensorial reminders, and riveted with a determined new optimism».